SEVEN BILLION EARTHIANS October 31, 2011

The planet has now more people than ever and it looks like we are getting more.
Some places are getting very crowded. Some people who are born are not getting the opportunities to grow that they should.That is because tragically, as in Somalia there mothers are malnourished. And there is increased pressure on food and water. There are other species on this planet who are also finding survival tough, which is more to do with the way in which human beings are changing the land surfaces, the composition of the oceans and the atmosphere. And on the evolutionary scale we have assigned ourselves the category of being the smart ones. We claimed more than that, of course, since the full expression of our human possibilities would be realized both in compassion and wisdom.

NPR confirms that the billion we are talking about here is a thousand million, and notes that the 350 million or so sometimes feel crowded that feeling is momentary, unlike India where the 7th billionth baby is excepted to today. Corey Flintoff invites a thought experiment:

Now, try to imagine a place where the crush of people and the noise and the motion never stop.

The maternity ward at Swami Dayanand hospital in northeast Delhi, the most densely populated district in India. U.N. demographers say the world’s 7 billionth citizen could be born in India on Oct. 31.
If young Mr. or Miss Seven Billion were to be born here, it might be at a hospital like the Swami Dayanand Medical Centre.

The maternity ward is as loud and crowded as anyplace else in northeast Delhi, a dingy hall with 30 or so beds, where young women lie — sometimes two to a bed — with their new babies. Dr. Venu Gopal, the medical director, says between 20 and 30 women give birth at this hospital every day. He is not optimistic about the crowded world that awaits the babies born here. “The culture is going to change,” he says. “There will be a lot of intolerance, and more physical violence, probably. And water and food are going to be a major crisis situation.”

That is, Gopal says, unless the rest of us make room for the 7 billionth baby in a more hospitable world.

These babies are coming into a world with immense problems, but hope lies in part in global communication technology. The problems are such, including overpopulation, that must be addressed if any of us are to both survive and live well in good conscience.

ELSEWHERE:

At the BBC, Rema Rahman points out we are dealing with population statistics and as such they have a margin of uncertainty since population is based on estimates. So give or take the odd million or so human beings to get a gauge on the world’s population we can all identify how many people were thought to be alive when we were born.